Scholarly critic and science fiction author/guru Lance Olsen has written an explosively relevant guide to creative fiction writing. As always he is three steps ahead of his contemporaries, not only in his futuristic theory of writing, but also in his publishing savvy. Olsen is no stranger to breaking fictional ground in a big, big way--check out his post-post modern novels BURNT, TIME FAMINE, and LIVE FROM EARTH. Here in REBEL YELL he sounds the clarion for a higher level of writing than we are used to--one that goes beyond the realm of realism to a new beginning, a dimension beyond conventional expectations and common fare.

REBEL YELL boasts practical writing features-- interviews with professional authors who put their work on the line daily, and Olsen's personal editorial advice that deftly guides readers through the elements of fiction writing. The book is a MUST for creative writing classes at the college level, and a treasure trove for the individual aspriring writer. A sharp, focused read, it launches a brave new era of writing, and of understanding literature.

From the basic elements of fiction writing to the fine points of editorial etiquette, from mining ideas to negotiating specific contract terms, REBEL YELL has it all. Not just for literary insurgents, Lance Olsen's how-to is an entertaining, up-to-date guide for all writers. Aspiring novelists and published authors alike will find themselves returning again and again to this highly readable reference tool for advice, guidelines, and old-fashioned encouragement. If you're looking for platitudes, vague generalities, or pompous pronouncements from on high, find another book -- there are plenty of them out there. This one teaches the craft and the trade of writing.

At last! An alternative to those glossy fiction how-to's for writers of glossy fiction for glossy mags. REBEL YELL is good sound advice for serious writers about all aspects of the craft, from the writing to the marketting to the promoting of it, as well as copious suggestions for valuable further reading. Here's a five-star Rebel Yell in honor of Lance Olsen for a book that is not only fun to read but is useful as well -- a service to the profession and a boost to the reader.

This book is a must-have for educators. Since the push for inclusion means many students with disabilities are entering regular schools and classrooms with their peers, it is of great worth that the regular teacher as well as the special education teachers know the background of the laws that pertain to these students with diverse needs. It would be beneficial to both students, teachers, and parents to know and understand how the laws are applied in court, what an IEP is, what is expected of the teachers, and what can be expected of the students. I have the other major law books on disability laws, but this one is more geared toward other participants in the process besides lawyers. It is very readable and very understandable without having to go to law school to get a background in law first. I suggest this or rather recommend this to my friends and students who are interested in working with those with disabilities in regular school settings. Karen Sadler Science Education, University of Pittsburgh, klsst23@pitt.edu

This book is very easy to follow and provides simple ways to bring up the conversation about abduction with kids at home. It doesn't scare or provide graphic information. It just gives terrific, informative rules and amazing tips that any parent or relative can use as a resource to talk about avoiding danger with young children. I was told about the book from a friend who is a teacher and they use it in the classroom as well with her 2nd graders. I think these types of lessons should be a mandatory school lesson.... RUN YELL TELL ! Great going!

John Haley went to war with a Maine infantry regiment and wrote down his experiences in this book. Overall, the book is an interesting account of one average soldier in the biggest war America has ever seen. Many tidbits of information are tossed out making the reader re-read them again. One such piece is a reference to a Confederate sharpshooter who was killing many Union soldiers. The person is finally killed and he turns out to be a BLACK man. This book is good for Civil War buffs, for those wanting a "feel" of what it was like to fight for the Union, and those who think that no blacks fought for the Confederacy.

for a Maine volunteer and army private John Haley was incredibally articulate. He had a wry wit and sharp sense of humour. He paints a vivid picture of day to day life in the field. Haley has a self depreciating manner that lends credibility to his accounts as you don't feel he is embellishing in order to elevate his own status. I really felt this was an honest account of the hardships of the war as well as the mundania. If you love civil war history or like myself have a fondness for Maine history you should put this journal at the front of your list.

This is a sweet collection of short anecdotal stories and poetry by mostly high school or college-aged Asian American females. The book is organized thematically, with subtitles like 'Family ties,' under which we find a variety of short stories written by girls/women of a variety of Asian ethnicities (though pieces authored by Korean Americans seem disproportionately large in number) who claim a variety of U.S. regional affiliations. The idea behind the book seems to be to prove or justify the internal diversity of a demographic popularly called 'Asian American females' - their races, personalities, interests, thoughts - and works as a response to the monolithic view of Asian American women offered by mass media. Whether or not it was intended, the book is unfortunately geared towards a very small audience; not only is it made to appeal to an Asian American female-specific readership that assumes a sort of unofficial sisterhood among females of Asian ancestry, its stories also tend to feature themes that are too high on light anecdotes and too low on fodder for intelligent thought and discussion. That is, most stories seem juvenile: limited to proving the authors' superficial individuality with a review of their outward lives and the problems they face as individuals solidly affiliated with two (or more) cultures but unable to pledge allegiance to any one. The stories in this book - while they number quite a few - are unable to provide detail to the identity crises mentioned or described in passing - details which will provide a deeper, richer, more complete, and more intelligent view of these spirited young countributors by answering basic questions such as 'Who am I?' 'Why am I?' and 'Why do I think so?' We in America have been content for far too long with vague statements about 'appreciating my culture' or 'knowing my culture/who I am' from Americans whose ancestors do not hail from Western Europe. It is time now for young Asian Americans (and other census-defined demographics) to more intelligently claim their individuality by closely examining exactly who they are and why. It is not enough to say that one 'understands what it means to be [Asian]' because has taken a short vacation to Asian nation X after graduating from high school. One must more thoroughly examine oneself before endeavoring to claim that ability to understand so complex a subject - a thorough examination not found in Yell-Oh Girls.

I ordered this book online a few weeks before it came out in bookstores on August 1. For the first few moments after I got it in the mail, I just held it. This is a book I would appreciate now as a 21-year-old college graduate, but one that would have been my companion as a miserable high schooler.

I don't know what the editor Vickie Nam went through exactly when she grew up in a white town, since I grew up outside of LA for most of my life where there were always tons of APA kids. But I related to so many of the stories because I remember how it felt being an Asian American girl who knew I didn't fit into "American" society because the majority saw me as different-an alien, kind of. Every kid can probably think of a time when he or she was called a 'chink' (a penetrating story in "Dolly Rage"), or when she tried to live up to her parents dreams (several stories in "Family Ties").

I loved reading this book because it's a first real resource for kids who are trying to understand their cultural identity. It's something I can share with my baby cousin when she reaches middle school, so she's not just stuck with the stuff that portrays white girls and mainstream society. This book-- well-written and totally relevant in today's world-- is definitely going to make girls look at themselves in new ways. Thanks to the courage of a whole army of Yell-oh girls!

This book does a lot to restore my faith in the publishing industry, which often seems more concerned with profit and packaging than substance, vision or good writing. Although I am a contributor to the anthology, when I first received editor Vickie Nam's call-for-submission emails a year and a half ago, I was skeptical. I was interested in issues facing Asian American women and girls, but I doubted that publishing giant HarperCollins was capable of producing a thoughtful, sophisticated book about deeply personal, complex and diverse experiences.

But despite my fears, the book is wonderful, and I wish it had been written ages ago! This anthology of personal writings by Asian American girls and women is the first of its kind, and it sets a high standard for any future work that wishes to treat Asian American girls' issues. The 80-some essays, letters, stories and poems included in it are thoughtful, eye-opening, moving, honest, strongly-voiced and well-edited.

Furthermore, the collection will dispel most myths that readers of any race or gender may hold about Asian American females. Both the girls and the older "mentor" women published here exhibit a great diversity of backgrounds, personalities, interests, accomplishments and views. They have done, felt and experienced so much, and they write with sincerity and eloquence about everything from kim chee to punk to anorexia to feminist theory. What the writers share is a determination to engage with issues of gender, race, ethnicity and culture, and to stand up for themselves in a society that punishes difference. Vickie Nam's careful editing and organization, along with her thoughtful, personable chapter introductions, give coherence to an eclectic array of voices, but never stifles the natural energy of the pieces.

Like many writers' first books, this one seems to be a project of great personal importance to Vickie Nam, and it has the potential to change the way Asian American girls read. Finally, a heartfelt, complex work that portrays Asian American girls as more than just token minor characters or damaging stereotypes! This book is what was missing from all of our childhoods, but it is a great gift to future generations of Asian American girls.

Yell-Oh Girls will undoubtedly appeal most to Asian American teenage girls. However, young men and non-Asian Americans will surely see themselves in this collection as well, since we have all been on our own journeys toward self-acceptance and, as the book jacket says, "lived to yell about it."

Ken Brooks traces the history of the lowest of the low of the minor leagues in an interesting bit of cultural history which chronicles the Alabama-Florida League. The AFL (936-1962) consisted of cities which in some cases were hardly more than villages in southeast Alabama and northwest Florida. The league spanned the paradigm shifts of World War II and the development of all weather roads, antibiotics, airplane travel, and the disappearance of basefall as a central focus of small town life. The day of these boys of summer on fields of sometimes less than meticulous manicure, of sometimes dingy lights and of single cold shower dressing rooms, was the time of the $.20 cent hamburger, $.20 milk shake, $.20 loaf of bread and the $.20 gallon of gas, and of $250 as a pretty good paying job. It was a pre-TV, pre-air conditioning era when what happened on a summer's eve on a baseball diamond would be the stuff of the next day's conversation in the cafe's and service stations and of the winter's "Hot Stove League". What happened on local league diamonds could be the stuff of memorial comparisons that transcedened decades. It was a time when bicycles were safely left unattended in public places, and cars were routinely parked unlocked with windows down. It was a time when local teams, the leagues in which they played, and the comparitive statistics which accrued were matters of civic and communal consciousness. The viability of the low minors on the terms in which it then existed was a phenoemnon on its way out through displacement by paradigmatic cultural shifts even it reached its peak. There was no reason not to think at the time local baseball interest would not recover from temporary aberrant challenges and carry forth its continuity. The AFL initiated play with teams in places like Troy, Ozark, Enterprise, Dothan, Adalusia, and Union Springs, Al. and Panama City, Fl. From our present perspective, Brooks observes, it is easy to underestimate the importance of a Class D team to towns in the pre-TVA era. Brooks begins his historical portrait with Paul Hemphill's gripping and poignant experiential account of his one game with the Graceville, Fla. Oiliers (1954) Graceville, a village of circa 1,000 population, was the most tiny of all towns in professional baseball in the lowest of the lowest of classifications, but Hemphill's tears had salt which burns through the years with a sting with which those who have in some context similarly felt the devastating nature of undesirable finality can easily emphasize. Brooks follows with a focus on Panama City as a Class D case history. The author includes interviews with more than a dozen persons who lived portions of the league's history. He presents the the statistics, the stadia, the death of a batting star from a beaning which almost destroyed the league, the administrative controversies, the playoffs and the great moments and the peccantries. Class D baseball, even in the lowest league in the lowest of classifications, was important it its own right. It was an integral expression of communal affiliation and association. The players were men who, as Bill James has expressed it, who played baseball. They were playing baseball there and then, and what they did there and then had its own meaning. Team compositions were likely to be composed of minor leaguers on their way down (sometimes as player managers), minor league journeyman whose experienes might span decades and experience in the more exotic places of the high minors, augmented by local coaches, law enforcement personnel, service station operators and novice players from who knows where. While the major leaguers of the era might be reknowed and admired nationally, and the magical creatures who cavorted under the arc lights on the tapesty of green and brown of the picture postcard diamonds of green cathederals like Rickwood Field in Birmingham or Ponce De Leon Park in Atlanta of the prestiguous Southern Association of major deep South metro areas might be reknowned regionally, the Class D ballplayers were equally were the glory of their times locally. In Brook's cultural history we meet men integral to the AFL -- the characters like Bo Belinsky, Bobby Bragan, Lou Pinella; the greats like Virgil "Fire" Trucks, Neal Cobb, Spencer "Onion" Davis; the journemen like Bobby Dews, Wayne Terwilliger, Cal Ripkin, Sr.; the sometimes notables like Bobby Cox, Steve Barber, Steve Dalkowski, Travis Tidwell, or Dixie Howell of the famous Ala. Crimson Tide combination of Howell to Don Hudson. If the last 1940s was the heyday of minor league baseball, it becomes clear by hindsight that even then incipient signs of an irreversible mortality were making themselves apparent. Even in the best of times franchise survivability was an ever present challenge. With the demise of the Class B Southestern League in the early 1950's, larger population centers like Montgomery, Selma and Pensacola replaced the more bucolic AFL entries. Even so, Graceville, Fla. lasted through 1958. By the league's last season (1962), the AFL had outlasted the historic and prestigous "major league of Dixie" (the Southern Association). Of the AFL league entries that last year, Pensacola, Ft. Walton, Selma, Dothan, Montgomery and Adalusia, only the latter had been an original league entrant, and that affiliation had not been consistent. Baseball is a something of seamless web. Persons and events connect with persons and events with an interconectivity of intriguing synchronicity and fortuity that reverberates with indivildual and colelctive memory. There is a sense in which the AFL lives on with memorial viability simultaneously with such displacement as an integral aspect of communal awareness and epxerience that knowledge of the location of the fields on which the leagues teams played has in some instances been lost to memory. Brook's THE LAST REBEL YELL is a graceful portrait of a vanished America. Reading the book is sort of like a diversionary drive on a two lane highway with its horse-shoe motels and neon lighted pre-fast food franchise drive-ins from an era when the highways went through all the towns, wherein in passing through one could see, sense and feel what the countryside was like, and in retrospect can remember how place existed once on such a lost and humane scale.

As a fan of Rebel Yell 1 it is with resigned disappointment that I accord this Sequel the two star rating befitting most any Sequel in any Genre. Because to my disappointment that is all Rebel Yell 2 amounts to. Outakes...leftovers. "Let's take a good thing and see how far we can make it stretch". To anybody interested in this subject matter I can only say buy the first book skip the sequel. And hold your breath together with me in hope that Jay Quinn takes a long enough breather for Rebel Yell 3 to be something FRESH.

Compared with the first Rebel Yell volume, the standout stories in this book are stronger. However, the first book was more consistent. Jay Quinn, as a writer, is destined for great things. His story "The Kitchen Table" is one of the most readable pieces in the collection. He writes with great wisdom and insight. Other enjoyable ones were "Miles Away" by Martin Wilson, "Small-Town Boy" by Greg Herren, "That Year's Crop of Kisses" by Robin Lippincott, and the last story "Everybody Loves the Musee d'Orsay" by Marshall Moore. This anthology was too long by three or four stories but it's still an excellent read.

Once I had read the first book of stories about the Southern gay experience, REBEL YELL, edited by Jay Quinn, I was hoping there would be a second book of stories to follow. My wish has now come true. Jay Quinn, who authored two other wonderful books, "METES AND BOUNDS" and "THE MENTOR" has gathered together twenty-two new southern gay stories. These are exciting and touching stories of awakening gay sexuality, and the impact that religion, friends and family have on their lives. They are told from a Southern gay perspective. There stories are from such noted authors as; Jeff Mann, Jameson Currier, Robin Lippincott, and Greg Herren, as well as many other new voices in Southern gay writing. These are not erotic, sex-filled stories, but heartfelt renderings of what it is like to be gay, and from the south. There's a feeling of Southern pride and heritage in each of these stories. Whether you're gay or straight, a southern boy will always be a proud southern boy.

All of these stories were a pleasure to read, but a few made quite an impression on me. "Miles Away" by Martin Wilson, tells of Michael's first sexual experience; "Jesse: November 1992" by Felice Picano, relates the emotional impact of HIV on two lifetime partners, and "The Kitchen Table" by Jay Quinn, is a truly sexy and emotional love story of the developing attraction that Phil, has for Trace, the man whose house he is remodeling.

Although the stories in this volume are universal in depictions of gay life in America today, they are a welcome addition for they are told by new voices, proud voices, from a perspective of different backgrounds, emotions and life experiences. These are the voices of Southern gay men. A wonderful book for gay adults to read, as well as parents and students who are trying to understand their gay son's sexual orientation. Don't miss this one! Could there be a REBEL YELL 3 coming? I hope so!!!

Joe Hanssen